Bulgaria ancient treasures, current events and great value

Anthony reports on Bulgaria and an extraordinary memorial garden created by a Queen for herself and meets up with two famous footballers…

The English seaside

Photographer Peter Williams celebrates the peculiar eccentricities and quintessential charms – from helter-skelters to lighthouses, pirates, palmists and Punch and Judy – of this cherished and rapidly changing English landscape

Citizens Advice

From the website:

“The Adviceguide website is the main public information service of Citizens Advice, providing people with round-the-clock access to CAB information on their rights – including benefits, housing and employment, and on debt, consumer and legal issues.”

Tourism Loyalty to Wales

Each country asks visitors from time-to-time whether they would revisit their country. Today, customer satisfaction specialists say that there are only a few questions that matter. They are whether you would revisit and would you recommend to your friends and relatives. (The reason for asking whether you would recommend to friends is that you are felt to be more likely only to recommend it to people you know if you were really happy to do so.)
So in the latest survey by Visit Wales, 70% of people said they would revisit and 86% said that they would recommend. These are high figures so, naturally, Alan Ffred Jones, the Assembly minister responsible for tourism and Visit Wales are rather pleased.

Grass Cutting at the Weekend That’s Different

If you scan down the 750 or so items listed in our events column you will find strange, amusing and oddish ones that reflect the make up of our countries. Take, for example, the National Scything Championships at the annual Green Scythe Fair that were held exactly a week ago at Thorney Lakes in Somerset. Who does go to fairs like this? How much interest can there be apart maybe, from enthusiastic scythers?
Quite a lot seems to be the answer because record crowds gathered including lots of children. What is a record crowd for an event like this I hear you ask? 50? 500? The answer is more than 2,000 for what I would have thought was of only little interest. How wrong I am.
According to the organisers scything is a sport. Agriculture’s answer to snowboarding.

Favourite film locations

I happened to see the Sarah Jessica Parker film, I Don’t Know How She Does It, last night. The film, based on Alison Pearson’s best selling novel, was shot in Boston and had the effect of making me want to book a break in Boston.

Don’t ignore the Iguacu Falls

Confession time: I very nearly didn’t make it to the Iguacu Falls- being too busy topping up the tan on Rio’s Copacabana Beach